Beautifully Strange Stories: A Review of The Great Grown-Up Game of Make-Believe The 28 stories in The Great Grown-Up Game of Make-Believe are beyond imaginative in their use of extended metaphors, personification of objects and animals, and storylines that are a mash-up of the re...

"Most women, especially mothers—working moms, stay-at-home moms, beleaguered moms, single moms, and married moms—will recognize themselves in one or more of these tales."

Dorothy Rowena Rice reviews @ladiwoods.bsky.social's story collection, published by @autumnhouse.org:

Whitney French: Love, War, Memory, and Black Futurism Amanda and Tiffanie chat with Whitney French, author of Syncopation: A Novel in Verse, about memory, identity, and what it means to reshape yourself in a fractured world.

***NEW EPISODE!***

Amanda Fields & Tiffanie Drayton talk w Whitney French, author of Syncopation: A Novel in Verse!

@riverstreetwriting.bsky.social

After Midnight They line up in bed thusly:Middle-aged man, soft but still square in shape,like a block of unmolded clay, sleeping.Too thin, too sensitive, nine-year-old boy,air whistling from his snot-caked nose.Mid...

Read Misty Archambault's succinct glimpse of family, "After Midnight," in our March/April issue:

freeze frame photo of rain in curving arcs with a black background - by Nguyen Vanh on Unsplash

"Tomorrow I knocked on your door"

Read Maureen D. Hall's poem, "Time Lapse," in our latest issue: literarymama.com/articles/dep...

Lara Ehrlich: Rage Against the Patriarchy Amanda and Sam chat with Lara Ehrlich, author of Bind Me Tighter Still, about domesticity and wildness in motherhood, the fierce love for our children, and feeling like we’re always falling short.

*NEW EPISODE!*

Rage Against the Patriarchy

Amanda Fields & Sam Field talk w @laraehrlich.bsky.social, author of Bind Me Tighter Still:

Finding Writerly Mamas in Maryland I just returned from AWP in Baltimore where I met writers, editors, and publishers from all over the country. I connected with writers featured in Literary Mama, including one fiction writer who publi...

@sheshellwrites.bsky.social, on attending AWP:

Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV) | GLAAD Each year on March 31, the world observes Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV) to raise awareness about transgender people.

glaad.org/tdov/

Stills From the Life of a Writing Mother: A Review of Mothersalt When I became a mother, after wanting to be one for a very long time, I expected to transform into mother: a role that would bring peace, wholeness, and joy to my life. But what I couldn’t predict was...

"How does my writer self belong in motherhood?"

Katherine Harnisch reviews Mia Ayumi Malhotra's poetry collection, Mothersalt, in our latest issue:

"I found myself compelled to read story after story, in part to discover what story-telling twist the author had in store for me next."

Many thanks to Dorothy Rice and @literarymama.bsky.social for this thoughtful review of this award-winning collection by @ladiwoods.bsky.social!

Beautifully Strange Stories: A Review of The Great Grown-Up Game of Make-Believe The 28 stories in The Great Grown-Up Game of Make-Believe are beyond imaginative in their use of extended metaphors, personification of objects and animals, and storylines that are a mash-up of the re...

Read the full review here: literarymama.com/articles/dep...

March/April 2026 Literary Mama

The March/April issue of Literary Mama is here!

Just the Woman Who Married Their Father My husband and his three children pile in the back door, shaking off wet coats and cheerfully bickering about what pizza toppings we’ll have and which movie we’re going to watch. I hand around mugs of...

"I was getting a life-long package deal—him, his children, and their mother. But I really had no idea what to expect, and how bruising it would sometimes be."

- from Quade Hermann's essay, "Just the Woman Who Married Their Father," in our latest issue:

Rebecca Lehmann: Resurrecting Anne Boleyn and Going from Poet to Novelist Eva and Amanda chat with Rebecca Lehmann, author of The Beheading Game, about rewriting Anne Boleyn through the lens of motherhood and bringing a poetry background to novel-writing.

"The thing about the story that I find resonant and that I think resonates with people 500 years later is that in so many ways, it seems like she's a woman being punished for her power and her success."

@rebeccaslehmann.bsky.social, author of The Beheading Game:

Opportunities Literary Mama is an all-volunteer organization that brings mamas and mama supporters together through literature. Over the years, our staff has included mamas of all sorts, reaching across identities ...

We're looking for a reviews editor!

Spill On a sunny day in the Gulf, you can see the curve of the horizon over open water. Look long enough and you can almost feel it spinning: a cosmic egg turning and turning toward birth. When we were t...

"My partner started having migraines. A boy I used to go fishing with developed seizures. BP paid us more money than we’d ever seen, and we all signed releases."

-from Jules Foshee's incredible essay, "Spill":

Chloé Caldwell: Infertility & Queer-ception Eva and Amanda chat with Chloé Caldwell, author of Trying, about loneliness in infertility, contradictions with IVF in the queer community, and the rawness of writing in the moment.

"Okay, so if you're hetero, you can go straight to IVF, but if you're queer, you have to fail six IMODs."

Chloe Caldwell, author of Trying, talks with @evalangston.bsky.social & Amanda Fields on This Mama Is Lit!

Philosophical Force, Quiet Rumination: A Review of Mothers and Other Fictional Characters Nicole Graev Lipson’s Mothers and Other Fictional Characters: A Memoir in Essays is composed of 12 long-form essays on modern motherhood viewed through a literary lens. Lipson strikes an interesting b...

@jocelynjanecox.bsky.social reviews @nglipson.bsky.social's memoir in essays, Mothers and Other Fictional Characters:

Super honored to be part of Seaside Gothic’s Issue 15.

Maggie Smith: My Work is Play Holly and Amanda chat with Maggie Smith, author of Dear Writer, about applying poetic license to writing and beyond, embracing the beginner's mind, and aging in reverse through creativity.

"imagine if we allowed people to engage w poetry the way we expect people to engage w music. Nobody plays you a song they love or sends you a playlist & then says, get back to me w meanings of all of these songs."

@maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social on our 50th episode of This Mama Is Lit!

Dear Edith I saw you as a bean on a screen and I knew you were mine. Your father thought you were Albert, like his own father, but I knew that you were Edith, to be named for my much loved grandmother. You we...

"After a throb of silence, we asked what was wrong. He turned to the screen and pointed to a seemingly endless list of flaws and catastrophes on you that we could neither recognize nor understand."

from Michele Amoah Powponne's essay, "Dear Edith," in our Sept/Oct issue:

Mama and...Self-Care Two sets of pounding feet followed by shrieks of laughter. What are the kids doing,” I thought. I shrugged and kept writing. I had a cup of Bustelo, my Golden Era hip-hop at low volume, and a ...

@amplifywithfemi.bsky.social is calling for contributions in our latest "Mama And" writing prompt:

Share in the blog comments, on IG w the hashtag #MamaAnd, tagging us @literary_mama on FB, & Bluesky @literarymama.bsky.social. The prompt will remain active throughout the month.

Letters from Kazakhstan: A Review of Women’s Writing in Amanat In the introduction to this first-of-its-kind collection, editors and translators Zaure Batayeva and Shelley Fairweather-Vega explain that the Kazakh word amanat carries multiple interpretations. It c...

"The translators’ skill is manifested by the diversity of voice, nuance, and tone they evoke in this assembly of twenty-four pieces by thirteen authors."

ACS Bird reviews Amanat: Women’s Writing from Kazakhstan, edited and translated by Zaure Batayeva and Shelley Fairweather-Vega (Sept/Oct issue):

From the Editor September/October 2025 Last September I entered a new season of motherhood. My one-year-old suddenly became this eighteen-year-old launching her life halfway across the country. The days leading up were filled with late-nig...

"I think that’s what motherhood is about—this small piece of hope that we carry around with us like a pebble. Hoping for the best for our kids as we white-knuckle the liminal time...between their constant presence and mourning their absence."

@rudribhattpatel.bsky.social opens our new issue:

Submissions are open. Send us your best short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.

Before submitting, please review our guidelines at the link below:

buff.ly/bqo8RXA

#poetrycommunity

Ozzy Osbourne, the frontman of Black Sabbath, died today, at 76. Osbourne—along with half of the musicians in Led Zeppelin and the key members of Judas Priest—was raised in the bombed-out ruins of the British Midlands. Read more: nyer.cm/iCI3UFJ

May/June 2025 Literary Mama

It's here! We hope you enjoy the abundance of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, literary reflections, profiles, and reviews in our July/August issue!

Opportunities Literary Mama is an all-volunteer organization that brings mamas and mama supporters together through literature. Over the years, our staff has included mamas of all sorts, reaching across identities ...

We're looking for a senior editor to join our team!

literarymama.com/opportunities

Alicia Elliott: Creating with Intention Eva and Amanda chat with Alicia Elliott, author of And Then She Fell, about cultural creation stories, contemporary Indigenous life, and how a psychotic episode led to deeper understanding.

🎧 New episode 🎧

Check out our conversation with Alicia Elliott, author of “And Then She Fell,” about cultural creation stories, contemporary Indigenous life, and how a psychotic episode led to deeper understanding.

Listen on Substack or wherever you get your podcasts!

“Like a quilt, in which scattered pieces of fabric are used to create a new whole, Kiefer stitches together scenes...” Read Lori Rottenberg’s review of Abbie Kiefer’s Certain Shelter here:
literarymama.com/articles/dep...